Throughout the current debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA, and its sister bill the Protect Intellectual Property Act, PIPA, supporters and opponents have been in agreement that online piracy is a problem that should be addressed.
Opponents of the bills will often say the government should do something to stop the illegal downloads of copyright material around the Web, but SOPA and PIPA give the government too much reach into the Internet.
And they are absolutely correct. Giving the government the power to shut down websites without due process upon suspicion that the sites have illicit copyright material is too much power. Under these pieces of legislation, the owners of websites will be responsible for illegal content uploaded by users, whether or not they know the material exists on their site.
But shouldn't opponents of these bills be questioning the entire reason for their existence? In the U.S. and elsewhere, there exists a belief that ideas deserve some protection by the government. Copyright law assumes that the creators of music, books, art and new technologies have a right to their material and that anyone who attempts to replicate this material is in violation of the law.
Copyrights, it is argued, encourage innovation by giving people who create new things the incentive to introduce new forms of art and technology without the fear that their ideas will be stolen. The argument continues that without this incentive, no one will create anything new.
But if copyrights are designed to help emerging creators and artists, why is it that those in the establishment, such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, are among the most ardent supporters of the bill? If copyrights are supposed to create incentives for innovation and creativity, why is it that independent musicians, writers, artists and filmmakers have not come out strongly in favor of these pieces of legislation?
The fact of the matter is that copyright law, as it stands, gives those already in the "creative class" an intellectual monopoly over ideas. The "illicit" use of copyright material on the Internet has not hindered but created an explosion in creativity.
How many people have become YouTube sensations by covering or mixing popular songs and then going on to record their own music and albums? Copyrights prohibit the ability of others to imitate and create derivative works without permission of the creator, limiting our capacity to expand on existing material.
Opponents of SOPA and PIPA should move beyond their protest of these laws and question the entire monopolistic structure of our current intellectual property laws.
